We are living in very unique times these days, especially as this applies to how we think, behave, and interact with others and the world around us. Unlike previous generations of people who spent most of their days working in the physical space of others, increasingly more people today experience far less time interacting with people, and that is contributing to an entirely different prototype of human being. More and more students take classes online these days, and many employees — even post-pandemic — still do much of their work remotely and away from others. An argument can be made that we are becoming more efficient (though not everyone agrees with that), but at what cost? For example, you might get more work done working at home (maybe??), but what long-term mental health costs are there when you go through an entire day and don’t interact with other people in person? Is there value to sharing life with others, laughing, and simply enjoying one’s company for a little while? Many psychologists say ‘yes,’ but in-person moments may be decreasing as we increase our use of technology, thereby fundamentally changing how we interact with the world around us — and each other. These changes are also directly impacting how we develop, including changes in things we used to take for granted (i.e. how we communicate in person with each other).
Reality & make believe
As we move into the future we appear to be spending less of our time in what I call “reality,” and more time in virtual reality. Reality, defined here, is the space around you, including all human interactions and real life experiences. Virtual reality, comparatively, is everything you experience through your phone — i.e. Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, YouTube, etc. If you go through each day and examine how much time you spend doing virtual reality things versus true reality, you might be surprised at what you learn, and the extent it is changing how you live your life.
When we interact with others in the real world, we have to communicate, problem-solve, create, make decisions, and manage stressful situations. We also read body language, receive feedback from others (including compliments that lift our mental health), and gain inspiration from important exchanges we have with those who we love and respect. In fact, we largely develop as people by where we spend our time and the people we interact with, but that is being replaced, minute by minute, by more time directed to passively scrolling through our phones.
When it comes to living more of our lives in virtual reality, I am talking about mindless scrolling, silly memes, random posts, and pointless videos that offer very little value. And we do this hour after hour, day after day, year after year. What do you think the cost is to our mental health and overall human development with every hour that would have been devoted to time spent in person with great friends, but is instead devoted to sitting alone swiping random videos or reading silly memes?
Evolution changes & technology
Charles Darwin, known for his views on evolutionary biology, theorized that we evolve by means of natural selection. French zoologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck offered a slightly different view on human development, specifically around the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use (or disuse). If we extend on Lamarck’s views, we should, at minimum, ponder what brain functions and behavioral skills and movements might be changing within our species due to technology? More specifically, when we do not have to communicate in person, read non-verbal behavior, or do any number of things we used to do but no longer need to, what is the long-term cost? If we don’t “use” our intelligence to verbally communicate, will we, over time, dramatically drop off in the ways in which we communicate with each other? And if that occurs, what is the long-term cost?
While you might think it’s funny to potentially “lose” the ability to successfully communicate with each other, you might want to take a closer look at kids today. If you watch a group of kids hanging out, more often than not they are each to their own in their own silo with their smart phone, rarely looking up or at each other. There isn’t much conversation, and rarely any questions asked among the group. In fact, there’s actually very little interaction — even with kids literally sitting next to one another — it’s instead just kids engrossed in their phones. Kids today are using different facets of their brains and engaging in entirely different behaviors and patterns than just a generation ago, the question now is to what extent will these changes impact mental health and overall human development?
Final thoughts
When you think about it, we directly interact and communicate with human less and less each day. Where we used to sit in each other’s company and talk about the day, today we might still sit in another person’s physical space, but we look at our phones far more than we talk in person. We also interact in similar ways at school and at work — less in person, and more remote. All of these changes prompt us to think about the ways in whcih we are chanigng, and the overall impact of these changes on our mental health and overall wellness.
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